Judges were particularly impressed with Bates initiatives in environmental sustainability, according to Melissa Ezarik, managing editor of University Business, a national business magazine for higher education based in Norwalk, Conn.

“With a full 82 percent of waste diverted from the waste stream through composting, recycling, or a program where waste is sent to a local pig farmer, the building doesn’t even have enough waste to fill a dumpster,” Ezarik said. “So there isn’t one. And nearly one-third of the food budget is spent locally.”

Although the College’s New Dining Commons is a new facility, by student request the seating area maintains the feel of the old Commons. The servery was designed for easy traffic flow, capable of handling 500 or more within 30 to 45 minutes.

“We’re very excited to be recognized for something that is central to the student experience here at Bates,” said Director or Dining Services Christine Schwartz. “We have a longstanding commitment to environmental sustainability at Bates, and our new facility has allowed us to enhance our sustainability mission.”

Higher education institutions from across the nation submitted their dining programs for consideration with 65 entries received. Entries were evaluated by three editors and the magazine’s art director (also a college parent) as well as by a recent college grad, a graduate student and Neal A. Raisman, a higher education consultant and former college president.

The Dining Halls of Distinction program reflects excellence in all aspects of dining operations, including atmosphere, service, variety of offerings, guest satisfaction, environmental sustainability and financial stability. Other schools receiving a top designation are Boston University (large private institution); Bucknell University (medium/small private institution); and Virginia Commonwealth University (public institution). View story from University Business, October 2009.

An unusual donation of $2.5 million to Bates College has increased the college’s already high use of local, organic and natural food.

The gift coincided with the construction of a new energy-efficient [intlink id=”1370″ type=”post”]dining Commons[/intlink] that opened last February. Together they inspired a yearlong college focus this academic year on the complex issues connected with food and food systems.

The anonymous gift, although one of the most generous in Bates’ history, would not be unusual in college philanthropy if it were directed toward supporting a faculty chair or naming a building. But the purpose of this gift is unique in its focus on developing and expanding healthy, local food purchases by the college.

“I am so glad that we have a donor with this vision,” said Bates President Elaine Tuttle Hansen. “People often give to support faculty and curriculum and programs, and that’s necessary and wonderful. But here is a gift that actually supports operations and recognizes that there is a financial cost to doing the right thing, from both a nutritional and an ethical perspective. Our donor says to us, ‘I understand and I want to help. I want to make feasible what I believe is important for the present and the future.'”

The anonymous alumni donor stipulated that investment earnings on the $2.5 million endowment be devoted to meeting the additional cost of serving more local, natural and organic food at Bates. For Bates, which has documented environmental sustainability programs back to 1986, that figure was already high. About 22 percent of the annual food budget had been spent in recent years on local, natural and organic food.

The gift has allowed the College to increase that number to 28 percent in the past fiscal year. For context, the national student initiative “Real Food Challenge” has as its target to redirect 20 percent of all food purchased by colleges and universities (currently $4 billion) toward “real food” by 2020.

In remarks prepared for delivery at Convocation on Wednesday, Sept. 3, Bates President Elaine Tuttle Hansen said: “In their own characteristically ambitious yet modest way, so many Bates faculty, students, staff members and alumni are clearly part of a quiet movement — national and international — that is tackling the problems of our food system. By contemplating food, we want to celebrate and share even more widely many powerful stories about Bates and food.”

Besides celebrating and making visible what already occurs at Bates, the initiative has a second objective, Hansen explained.

“We want to add to the understanding and knowledge about food on campus — where our food comes from, the food system at Bates, the larger food system in which Bates is embedded. So we don’t want to forget in celebrating how we all eat, that there are growing social problems associated with the food system. We want to raise consciousness. We want to educate ourselves. We want to dispel our own ignorance and complacency by considering these issues. We want to explore why, for Bates, a strong and healthy food culture is so important to the educational mission.”

Bates’ focus on food has included a summer reading assignment for this fall’s incoming first-year students and plans for a variety of panels and presentations throughout the academic year.

Bates’ exploration of food took root last spring when President Hansen gathered a small number of students, faculty and staff who share an interest in food and eating to consider the concept.

The group, she said, was “overwhelmed by how much was already going on at Bates. We felt we should develop a kind of clearinghouse, making it all more visible. With food as the thread that connects us, to each other and to our larger community, we will spend the next year celebrating and contemplating more deeply the ways that gathering together around food enhances and supports the college’s mission,” she said.

Bates is recognized as a leader in college environmental sustainability. In July, [intlink id=”5689″ type=”post”]Bates was notified it received a top score[/intlink], along with 10 other U.S. colleges and universities, in a “Green Rating” system developed by test preparation organization Princeton Review and ecoAmerica, a nonprofit environmental marketing agency. In August, Kaplan Inc. also notified Bates that it was on its list of “Top 25 Environmentally Responsible Colleges.”

Gary Paul Nabhan, who spent a year eating only foods produced in the desert Southwest within 250 miles of his home, discusses that experience at the Olin Arts Center Concert Hall at Bates College at 7 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 23. The lecture is free and open to the public.

Nabhan’s appearance is the sixth annual Philip J. Otis Lecture at Bates, funded by the Otis Endowment, which helps support environmental programs at the college. The author will discuss his new book, “Coming Home to Eat: The Pleasures and Politics of Local Foods” (W.W. Norton). Scheduled for publication this fall, the book describes Nabhan’s food adventure and his motives for undertaking it.

There’s culinary fascination in Nabhan’s tales of eating cactus buds, mesquite pods and Native American varieties of corn and squash, but the book’s overriding theme is much more serious. Behind the cornucopia of world foods that tempts every visitor to today’s supermarket, Nabhan believes, is an agribusiness industry that is proving a ruinous proposition for farmers, the environment and consumers themselves.

Director of the Center for Sustainable Environments at Northern Arizona University, Nabhan is expert in the political, economic and environmental issues involved in today’s agriculture. Modern industry practices, he says, entail tremendous fossil fuel consumption, the destruction of farmland and family farming, poor consumer nutrition and the loss of beneficial genetic traits in food crops and livestock.

An article about Nabhan in the May 2001 issue of Discover magazine lays out discouraging statistics about those impacts. For example, writes reporter Gretel H. Schueller, a typical piece of food travels 1,400 miles before it reaches the consumer. Nabhan, in response, aims to persuade readers to buy as much food as they can from local producers.

“Each time we put something in our mouths,” Nabhan told Schueller, “it’s a moral act, whether we admit it or not.” His message is a timely one in Maine, where the state Department of Agriculture is in the second year of a marketing campaign with the same goal, “Get real. Get Maine!”

Nabhan is the author of 12 books and the recipient of numerous awards for his work, including a MacArthur “genius” fellowship.

The Philip J. Otis Endowment was established in 1996 by Margaret V. B. and C. Angus Wurtele in memory of their son, Philip, Class of 1995, who died attempting to rescue an injured climber on Mt. Rainier. In recognition of Otis’ appreciation for the environment, the Otis Endowment helps support Bates programs in areas related to the environment, particularly the spiritual and moral dimensions of our relationship with the environment.

The Otis Lecture brings speakers of regional, national and international reputation to Bates.